de greef - intro to sociology

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Introduction to Sociology. I Author(s): G. De Greef Source: American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 8, No. 4 (Jan., 1903), pp. 478-520Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2762053Accessed: 19-02-2015 21:49 UTC

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INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY.'

PART III. GENERAL STRUCTURE OF SOCIETIES.

CHAPTER I. PROLEGOMENA AND DEFINITIONS.

I.

IN the first volume of my Introduction to Sociology, published in i886, I proceeded to the analysis and classification of the constitutive elements of societies; in the second volume, published in I889, I entered upon the study of the social organs and functions considered alone. It remains for us to study societies in their general structure and afterward in their general life or totality. Structure and life correspond to the terms statics and dynamics, applied especially to Auguste Comte. It will appear later why we prefer the former expressions to the latter.

Many years have elapsed between the present publication and the appearance of the two preceding volumes; these years have been consecrated almost entirely to inductive researches. Some of the results of these researches have been published; others have formed the subjects of uninterrupted lectures upon social economy and the history of social economy, which I have given at L'Universite Nouvelle de Bruxelles. During this period, now somewhat long, I have been constantly elaborating the present work, which, in conformity with the positive method, is therefore only the philosophical synthesis of my previous patient observations, resumes of which were given in the different lectures, numbering in all about twelve hundred, which I have delivered from I889 to I902. I expect to publish here- after those concrete data of my abstract sociology of which my works upon taxes, upon coal-mining, upon the representative system, upon the evolution of beliefs and doctrines in the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Peru, Mexico, India, and China, upon commercial credit, upon money, upon credit and banks, etc., are fragments. I insist upon this point only in order to

,Translated by Robert Morris.

478



INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 479

recall to mind, if need be, that, faithful to the positive method, the present work rests essentially upon the widest observation that it has been possible for me to make, in addition to the numerous materials furnished by the learned specialists whose works I have followed attentively. In the third volume of Abstract Sociology, documentation will therefore appear only in an explica- tive way, and not at all as demonstration; that is, as in the Transformisme social, a detached portion of the last part of my work devoted to the life of societies.

In the Structure gdnlrale, no more than in the Al&ments and Functions et organs sociaux, or in Transformisme social and Lois sociologiques, do we claim, like Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, to have constructed an abstract sociology in its entirety. At present such an attempt would surpass the individual capacity of the sociologist and the corresponding and preliminary maturity of the special social sciences. As hereto- fore, we shall have mainly in view the indication of the methods and plan which may doubtless lead to the construction of this sociology in the future. Yet we shall trace, as far as we can, some outlines calculated to indicate some principle features which maturer sociology will contain.

After the great synthetic, but premature, effort of Quetelet, of Comte, and of Spencer, it seems to me that the work ought to be renewed with the more complete co-ordination of the special social sciences, particularly of political economy, ethics, and law, which are in course of transformation.,

In Materialisme historique, I have already pointed out the danger to which we are exposed by a certain part of contem- poraneous sociological literature with its particular points of view. I refer especially to the exclusively psychological school. It is producing a very brilliant, even useful, literature, but one- sided, and therefore quite divested of that consideration of the ensemble which is and must remain precisely the sociological

,'I expected to devote an early chapter of the work to a theoretical and critical expose of the statics of Quetelet, of Comte, and of Spencer, an exposd which has been the subject of a three-years' course at L' Universite nouvelle, but this chapter has itself become a considerable volume, which I hope to publish soon as a complement of the present work.



480 THE A MERICA N JOURNA L OF SOCIOLOGY

point of view. But this present inferiority is only relative; it prepares for future progress; it is precisely like that equally natural phenomenon the attempt of the founders of sociology (with the possible exception of Quetelet) to create a social synthesis at a time when the social sciences, and even the sciences directly anterior to sociology, such as biology and psychology, were yet insufficiently developed. The result has been the biologic and psychologic interpretations, and then also the later materialistic or economic interpretations-all of which indicate precisely the necessity of reconstructing sociology upon all the facts of each of these sciences. Likewise, we see one school contending that the social question is a moral question, another that it is a juridical question, while the majority still consider it essentially political.

Transition from the study of social elements, functions, and organs to the study of the general structure of societies necessi- tates both a few definitions and a few retrospective surveys.

We have defined "sociology" as the general philosophy of the special social sciences. These are:

i. Economics, or the science of social nutrition. 2. Genetics, or the science of population. 3. ZEsthetics. 4. Collective psychology: religion, metaphysics, positive

philosophy. 5. Ethics. 6. Law. 7. Politics Each of these sciences has its special philosophy. It is the

abstract ensemble of these philosophies that constitutes the domain of sociology.

This classification represents to us the totality of the social sciences according to their natural, logical, historical, and dogmatic order of increasing specialization and complexity, or of decreasing generality and simplicity, in conformity with the classification of antecedent sciences established by Auguste Comte. This order of classification is abstract, for in concrete reality every economic phenomenon, for example, implies a



INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 48I

genetic, aesthetic, psychic, moral, and juridic aspect, to say nothing of a political aspect; and in the same way every psychic phenomenon, to give another example, is inseparable from the series of the other points of view.

This leads us to recall that the sciences in general are concrete or abstract; concrete when they look upon the phenomena, the relations, the properties, the laws in the bodies themselves whose study constitutes their domain; abstract when they consider, on the contrary, these phenomena, relations, properties, and laws independently of the bodies and aside from the variable conditions of the same in time and space.

Thus mathematics, mechanics, and rational astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and abstract psychology, are to be distinguished from such kindred sciences as calculus, mineralogy, crystallography, botany, zoology, human psycho-physiology, pedagogy, medicine, including psychiatry, etc. Likewise, the social sciences are concrete in so far as they relate to particular civilizations, societies, and institutions considered in their entirety; from this point of view they are essentially descriptive and based upon observation and experience.

The abstract sciences in general have the concrete sciences as their foundation, and this is true with regard to the social sciences. The abstract social sciences advance to general, universal laws from the special historical laws developed by the concrete social sciences. This is true not merely of those parts of the social sciences which have as their special object the quantitative study of the constitutive elements of societies. Although statical analysis may be applied to these elements aside from the forms in which they concretely appear, it nevertheless remains concrete and historical as long as it does not rise to general relations common to the ensemble of civilizations. In its turn, concrete and descriptive sociology is transformed into a general and abstract philosophy, whose laws, more and more reduced, are the co-ordinated expression of the relations common to all societies from the simplest to the most complex, without regard to their variable conditions in the past, present, or future. Abstract sociology attempts also to reduce these temporary or historical variations to a regular order, to laws.



482 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

The possibility of establishing an abstract sociology has been strongly contested by the different schools, which recognize only historical laws, that is to say, laws applicable solely to determined periods and civilizations. Naturally, it had to be thus, since, in sociology as elsewhere, concrete knowledge precedes abstract knowledge, and since the different attempts to establish an abstract sociology, from the fact that they were premature, seemed by their very feebleness and imperfection to confirm the condemnation pronounced by the representatives of the purely historical school. Yet, this condemnation will not be perpetual; the very progress of the concrete social sciences will result in lessening its severity and duration. It was also necessary that this conflict blaze out with greatest force precisely in the domain of economic science, the first of the social sciences in order of formation; but, for the same cause, it is also in this science that it will soonest come to an end. The passage to an abstract social economy will be facilitated by the works of Wagner, Roscher, Rumelin, Schmoller, and, among the socialists, of Karl Marx, as well as by the more and more profound studies relative to population, family, art, to scientific and philosophic doctrines, and to moral, juridic, and political institutions. Even the facts of social life make for this result; in proportion as the vast, world-wide society is organized with its superior centers of co-ordination above the particular societies, it will be recognized that common, constant, and universal laws have always governed in the formation and evolution of historic societies, apart from and beyond their accessory variations. This unity of sociological philosophy will appear plain with the world-wide unity of reality. Then, thanks to the progressive narrowing of the amplitude of social oscillations in a more and more co-ordinated world-wide civilization, it will be recognized so much the easier that, notwith- standing the more ample and apparently more disordered oscillations and variations of particular antecedent civilizations, in reality the same order is always imposed, although with pur- turbations, which, however, have never succeeded in altering its general character, structural as well as evolutive, static as well as dynamic.




The possibility of constructing a general, abstract sociology remains a most important problem; it is one of the principal points upon which we shall have to throw light, by the very fact of our new endeavor, although failure of our effort can never be invoked against the possibility of a more happy result in the future. This failure should be attributed only to the incapacity of the author, and in every case partial failure will be inevitable on account of the insufficient elaboration of the particular social sciences, and especially because of the incomplete development of the unitary, world-wide organization, which, by itself, is destined to facilitate the establishment of sociological monism in the collective consciousness. So, nearly all our efforts will bear especially upon the method to follow in order to succeed in the organization of an abstract sociology, rather than upon a more or less complete realization of this organization.

Thus, by a process both natural and logical, concrete and descriptive sociology is transformed into an abstract philosophy whose laws, more and more reduced to unity, will be the co-ordinated expression of relations common to all societies from the smallest and simplest to the largest and most complex, without regard to their variable conditions in the present, the past, and the future, except from the point of view of the constancy and regular order of these variations themselves.

If the conclusions of the different schools which admit only historical laws were well founded, positive philosophy itself would be condemned and decapitated, for this would admit that there does not exist an abstract philosophy of the social sciences, which are, therefore, different in this respect from the other sciences; in a word, there would not be any sociology except that of a discriptive and historical character. It seems to me that this narrow point of view must be abandoned; it was itself a simple, temporary, and relatively necessary reaction against the old absolute and metaphysical conception of so-called natural laws and orders of societies. This justified reaction has served to show that these laws and these orders, far from being complete and immutable, are in constant evolution. It is now necessary to make another step by recognizing that the divers




historical periods (a truth which is admitted especially by Karl Marx) are bound together in such a way that the periods in question, not being closed to each other, necessarily have common relations and laws which permit us to reduce them to a unitary structure and life.

II.

Abstract as well as concrete sociology is either static or dynamic. We prefer in place of this terminology that of general structure and general life of societies. In fact, we conceive of society as superorganic, and sociology has more direct relations with the sciences of life than with mechanics. The terms " static " and " dynamic " may be re-employed some day, pro- vided that social phenomena as well as organic phenomena are reduced to a purely mechanical and mathematical interpretation, from the monistic point of view of general philosophy; until that time the use of these expressions must be rejected, as it implies that the social facts are of less complex nature than the organic, or even the chemical and physical, facts, when, on the contrary, they are both quantitatively and qualitatively superior.

The expression " social statics" was borrowed from mechanical science. The first social theorists who observed that societies are mobile naturally interpreted social phenomena at first by the laws of mechanics. Then, in the case of those with whom the immobile aspect of societies was predominant, a still simpler and more general explanation was demanded from mathematics, the science of magnitudes, either arithmetic or geometric. The first legislators or social organizers were true architects, working according to pre-established plans traced conformably to lines and materials entirely susceptible of being reduced to a unit of measure or of number.

It is thus that, by an application of the law of apparent return to primitive forms, abstract sociology of the future, although under entirely different conditions, will perhaps succeed in expressing sociological laws in mechanical formulae which are themselves reducible to a general mathematical theorem or formula. Humanity appears to have traversed a scientific circle,




and it seems that its point of arrival is the same as its point of departure; in reality humanity, like a sound-wave in the ear, will have travesed a spiral, that is to say, a plane curve which continuously departs more and more from the point about which it revolves.

Necessarily, the mathematico-mechanical conception of the social order had to be the primitive conception. In fact, the fundamental scientific idea is that of measurement. Without measurement there is no comparison, no science unless it is qualitative and descriptive; knowledge of phenomena is exact and complete only when the statements of these phenomena express quantitative relations which can be represented by equations. Extension, the basis of geometry, movement, the basis of mechanics, together with the idea of quantity, the bases of the sciences of calculation, constitute the abstract mathematical sciences, and are applicable to all bodies in nature, even the social bodies. Nevertheless, as Poinsot' so well said: "Let us guard carefully against believing that a science is constructed when one has reduced it to analytical formula. Nothing can exempt us from studying the things themselves." Thus, not only is one unable to deduce a sociology from mathematics, mechanics, physics, chemistry, or even from biology and psychology, but also the analysis which we have made of societies in the preceding volumes cannot suffice; it must be completed by the study of societies themselves.

Rational mechanics is founded upon principles which spring from the very nature of movement, which is a primary and general idea, like that of matter and form. The mechanical relations of magnitudes of movement may themselves be expressed in alge- braic and geometric formule, reducible to units of measurement such as space and time, which are functions of each other. It was mainly the mechanical interpretation of societies which led to distinguishing in them the static aspect and the dynamic aspect. It was a natural step in the organization of sociology when later rational astronomy, physics, chemistry, first inorganic and then organic, repeatedly introduced more special points of

IThTorie nouvelle de la rotation des corps, pp. 30, 3 1.




view until, in the last of these points of view, the biological factor appeared and then the psychic factor in particular, the last of which completed the series of sciences whose co-ordination, not isolated, but encyclopa-dic, is at the basis of sociology. Now, it is only after these divers interpretations, at first exclusive, but later more and more combined, that, following the principle of Poinsot, we shall be able in time to begin to study societies in themselves as phenomena in part distinct from antecedent phenomena, although they are but the more complicated continuation of the same.

As in mechanics we call the causes of movement forces, without inquiring into the nature of these causes, in the same way we call the causes of social movement social forces. There are social forces as there were before them vital, physical, chemical, and astronomical forces.

The general problem of rational mechanics is to determine the effect of different forces acting simultaneously upon a given body, the separate effect of each of the forces being known. Mechanics is, then, the science of the combinations of forces. So long as social science was in the domain of empiricism, and so long as statesmen were able to imagine that they were the mechanicians of the societies whose forces they combined in view of certain results, the mechanical conception lent itself admirably to their illusion; besides, it was a first step toward truth. In politics, as in mechanics, it was observed that the meeting of forces may result either in their reciprocal neutrali- zation, the consequence of which is repose, equilibrium, or else in movement. Mechanical science and political art had, therefore, this object in common: the investigation of the conditions or circumstances of equilibrium and of movement; the only difference was in the nature of the bodies constituting the subject of research.

The definition of forces implies the law of inertia; a body remains in repose so long as no exterior force acts upon it; or, if it is in motion and no new force intervenes, its movement will be uniform and in a straight line. The statesmen applied this law of inertia by isolating their peoples, by protecting them as




far as possible from foreign influences; and, being unable to suppress movement entirely, they at least maintained the unity of its direction, knowing very well, in general, that when a movement is arrested by an obstacle the force manifests itself by a pressure or a traction upon the obstacle.

In reality, up to the eighteenth century political science was based mainly upon mechanics, and through mechanics was united to geometry and arithmetic. In fact, forces may always be expressed in units of weight which in turn are convertible into units of length. The law of Newton was one application of this valuation which was extended to political science: action is equal and opposite to reaction, the body of impact is itself always the object of an equal but contrary pressure exercised by the body of resistance.

In like manner the mechanical law of independence of movements dominated politics; whatever the development of the state might be, the relations of the citizens to each other, the social system, need not thereby be altered. From the simplest point of view, this law expressed the general fact that a uniform, rec- tilinear movement, exactly common to all the bodies of any system, does not modify the particular movements of those different bodies with respect to each other; these movements con- tinue to take place just as if the whole of the system were immobile. Thus, in the case of a moving ship, whatever may be the swiftness and the direction of its motion, the relative movements of the objects and the persons on board take place as if the ship were immobile, although to outside observers these movements form part of the whole movement. It appeared to be the same in the case of the voyagers upon the ship of state.

Moreover, it was an eminently scientific point of view to extend to societies the mechanical principle that forces are always proportional to the accelerations of motion that they produce.

Social statics was, then, a mechanical statics. Like the latter, it treated of the conditions of equilibrium of a system; in it the element of time was not considered. A phenomenon was considered as fixed, the variations which the forces of the sys-




tem might undergo being disregarded, since these belonged to the dynamic point of view. The conditions of equilibrium of the social system, as of every system, can therefore be represented by equations -a fact which indicates that the system is susceptible neither of translation in any direction whatever nor of rotation in any manner.

Although perhaps this assimilation of social statics with mechanical statics has been nowhere set forth in all its rigor, yet it represents the dominating conception of the oldest and most learned sociological school, and this school has exerted its influence up to the present time in all the social sciences from economnics to politics.

In the history of the sciences, statics was naturally developed before dynamics; in fact, the first is only the simplest, most general, and most abstract part of the second. It is, therefore, not astonishing that in sociology, as in mechanics, the dynamic point of view appeared and was developed until at last (with Herbert Spencer, for example) it became almost the exclusive point of view.

Auguste Comte has fully shown that the distinction between statics and dynamics extends to all phenomena whatever; for example, to biology, in which one rationally distinguishes between the anatomical point of view, relating to organization, and the physiological point of view, properly speaking, relating to ideas of life. He added, however, that there would be danger of neglecting the indispensable permanent combination of those two general points of view, which, in reality if not in analysis, are as indissolubly united as are order and progress.

Sociology being abstract or concrete, social statics will likewise be both abstract and concrete. It will have for its object the study of societies considered in a state of repose, either in a determined period of time and at a given place in space (concrete statics), or independently of time and space (abstract statics). As for dynamic sociology, it has for its subject the science of the evolution of societies, which is likewise considered from this double point of view.

After many others, Corte, in L'expdrience des peuples,a denies x P. 4L



INVTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 489

the utility, if not the possibility, of establishing an abstract sociology, and, consequently, an abstract statics also. Appeal- ing to the example of Auguste Comte, he asserts that

In order to formulate such a social metaphysics, it would be necessary to deal with data so general and so lacking in precision that one could not draw from them either any explanation of existing facts or any prevision of future phenomena, still less any practical conclusion. For example, it would be necessary to limit ourselves to showing, like Auguste Comte, that, in addition to the preliminary condition of language, the bases of social order are family, property, and religion; but giving to the word "family" a sense so general that it includes government; to the word "property" a sense so extended that it embraces all possible forms of appropriation, including property in common; finally, to the word "religion" so unaccustomed a sense that it includes polytheism and monotheism, determinism or scientific athe- ism, along with fetichism. Thus generalized, sociology would be without framework, it would have neither form nor consistency. Inoffensive as it would remain in its indefiniteness, it would have the serious disadvantage of inclining minds irresistibly disposed to reach conclusions to the belief that the fundamental institutions of all society are everywhere identical and immutable.

The author concludes: I think, therefore, that it is necessary to limit ourselves to a semi-

concrete, schematic sociology, generalizing the data furnished by selection from history, giving preference to the great civilized nations.

Indeed, since the attempt (including that of Auguste Comte) to construct, de planu, an abstract sociology without concrete, verifiable foundations, it has been the general practice to make sociology both incompletely abstract and incompletely concrete by making a selection of historical facts. The result has been a double failure, both scientific and philosophic. It is necessary to begin, on the contrary, with the study of social elements considered especially from the statical point of view; then to advance to the particular historical institutions in which these elements are blended; then to study the particular societies in their ensemble; then, finally, but only then, to look among these elementary and concrete facts for the general relations which they have in common, independently of their transitory forms in space and time. Such is the only scientific method, the only method capable of avoiding the difficulties pointed out with rea-




son by the author, and especially the only one capable of escap- ing the double error into which he falls, in turn with many others -the error, on the one hand, of making an arbitrary historical selection, and consequently a bad concrete sociology, and, on the other hand, of at least partly disclaiming to found an abstract philosophy of societies, under the vain pretext that the concrete bases are insufficient. The true method, that of all the sciences, that also of their particular philosophies as well as their general philosophy, requires that these bases be sufficient. The illustrative schematic methods, the methods of historical sam- pling, are only the palliatives of a demi-science. How does one dare to recommend these methods for sociology when the scholar who would permit himself to recommend the same in the antecedent sciences would by that very fact be disqualified? That the rigorous method is one of extreme difficulty no one denies, but this is always the case. Besides, the work to be undertaken is a work of co-operation, and the specialist in abstract sociology will have the privilege and the duty of borrowing the materials which will be furnished him by the specialists, properly so called. At the very least, it is necessary that he be acquainted with these materials, in order that the facts may not contra- dict the theory. Abstract sociology, even in its exemplative and schematic capacity, may be excused from recalling the facts to mind, but on condition of disowning any abstract law which is at variance, not merely with the concrete, but also with the elementary facts of science. Nevertheless, from the point of view of clearness and of demonstration, abstract sociology will state with advantage the particular laws upon which it founds its general theory, and, as far as possible, the principal data underlying these particular laws.

Moreover, abstract social statics is connected with concrete sociology in this, that, although the latter studies societies in certain parts of space and time, yet it also seeks to disengage the social facts relative to particular civilizations from relatively general, constant, and necessary relations, neglecting the accessory variations. In brief, concrete sociology is an intermediate step between history, properly speaking, and abstract sociology.




Yet it is necessary never to lose sight of the fact that in reality no society is in a state of repose, that is to say, a state of fixed, absolute equilibrium; absolute repose would be the cessa- tion of social life, absolute death. But, whatever the movements may be, there always exist constant and necessary conditions of equilibrium for these movements. The term "structure" is also more appropriate in this connection than the term "statics," because the former takes account in a more obvious manner of this continued equilibrium of organized bodies in movement. It is the investigation of these constant and necessary conditions of equilibrium, which are common to all social states, that constitutes the domain of abstract social statics, or, to use a better term, of the general structure of societies.

Just as concrete sociology is always relatively abstract, so likewise abstract social statics is in part descriptive and concrete, since its bases necessarily present these latter characteristics. It is therefore apparent that sociology, and consequently abstract statics, are a regular development of the inductive method.

Again, abstract social statics is in part descriptive for another capital reason; it embraces in its domain, not merely a study of elementary phenomena considered independently of the social tissues, organs, and bodies in whose formation they unite, according to the analysis that we made of them in part I, but it likewise includes the study of these tissues, organs, groups of organs, systems, etc. Now, the study of these aggregates is, in reality, necessarily descriptive. Thus, observation of the social elements will give rise especially to the consideration of quantitative relations and quantitative laws founded upon statistical data, while observation of forms, of special as well as general social structures, will in the main furnish the material for qualitative relations and laws. This distinction supports another consideration, namely, that quantity is itself one of the first constituent elements of qualitative differentiations; an increase of mass is not only favorable to differentiations, but it, by itself, constitutes the simplest of differentiations. The sociological laws are, then, abstract or concrete; the quantitative laws are naturally more



492 THE A MERICAN JO URNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

abstract than the qualitative sociological laws. Any science may be considered as formed when it is in possession of its special methods, when the boundaries of its domain are well marked, and when the formulae of its abstract laws can be quantitatively expressed. Thus the law of gravitation has a completely positive formula: all bodies attract each other in direct proportion to their mass and in inverse proportion to the square of the dis- tance. In sociology, an example borrowed from circulatory phenomena may be given; the useful effect is in inverse proportion to the dead weight and in direct proportion to effort.

The most exact abstract sociological laws are, then, both qualitative, or descriptive, and quantitative; hence the necessity of statics-that is to say, the analytic study and the classification of the social elements-as a basis. The method of observation with its numerous inductive processes, variable in different sciences, but identical at bottom, is the only possible method. Deduction can be applied only in sciences already formed, and from one science to another; in the latter case, great caution must be exercised in order to avoid error, especially in passing from biology, with its psychic dependence, to sociology.

Sociology, even abstract sociology, was naturally descriptive in the beginning. At least this statement seems to us to be true in the case of Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, to cite only the most eminent founders of social science. But positive sociology will be established in reality only when it shall rest upon the statistical and concrete facts of all the special social sciences, particularly economics. Auguste Comte was in error when, inverting the order of the positive method, he contended that in sociology and biology the whole is known before the parts. This pretended knowledge of the whole before that of the constituent elements was uniquely empirical, superficial, and plausible. It is to this deplorable error of method that we must ascribe his tendency to attribute essential and permanent characteristics to transitory historical forms. His entire hierarchic and absolute conception of societies has for its point of departure this error in method, the consequences of which have been further amplified




in the case of most of the sociologists of our epoch, who have not hesitated to approach general sociology with an insufficient preparation in the special social sciences. As a consequence, they have fatally neglected the essential and original characteristics of social phenomena, and have deduced the laws of these phenomena from the laws of the antecedent sciences, especially in recent times from the laws of biology and psychology, which are themselves imperfectly understood by the literati of this class. Yet it is necessary, in spite of the defect which they have in common with these other writers, to render full justice to the works of Lilienfield, Tarde, G. Lebon, and others, whose biologic and psychic deductions have very usefully, and even brilliantly, pointed out the relations and analogies-that is to say, the real similarities-which unite sociology to the two directly antecedent sciences; integral sociology will always have to take account of their points of view.

The empirical method is just the opposite of the scientific method. The latter starts with the consideration of the simplest and most general facts in order to advance methodically to the more complex and more special. Empiricism proceeds from the consideration of the external and superficial ensemble to the consideration of the deeper elements. It is only then that it works its transformation into science and, retracing in an inverse direction the first route traversed, advances methodically to knowledge, properly speaking. At the most, one may say that empiricism, by proceeding from the whole to the elements, opens the way to science, and that in this respect, by placing itself at a very broad point of view, it is a natural process in the advance of the human mind. In fact, the empirical method was employed in the infancy of all the sciences; but in no science is the whole known before the elements and the parts. As well say that a person upon another planet who distinguishes the earth knows our earth; he does not know it, in reality, any more than we know the planet Mars, for example.

In the first part of our Introduction a' la sociologie, we proceeded to the most complete analysis possible of the constituent elements of social bodies; we have shown that all these elements




can be reduced to two factors, which we may consider as simple to the extent that they are sociological facts: land and population. In the first we have included the entire environment, the inorganic as well as the vegetable and the animal, excepting the human species; the latter constitutes the second element of every society.

Land and population are both composite. However, the analysis of their elements is not within the domain of sociology, but belongs to that of the psychical sciences, the biological sciences, or the physical sciences in general. Sociology rests upon all of these sciences; societies themselves are the combined products of the phenomena corresponding to these sciences; but sociology has precisely for its subject only the results of these combinations; it is neither physics, biology, nor psychology; it is a science whose domain extends to particular combinations and even to all these combinations added together; it is a combination of their combinations.

Thus, by constituting itself a new foundation outside of its direct subordination to psychology and biology, sociology con- nects itself with the ensemble of inorganic philosophy. In the sociology of Comte, man and his environment are considered as if one were the author and the other were the theater of the social drama; in our sociology, the environment and man enter into a superior m6lange, whose product is society; in our view, without the theater, no humanity; without humanity, no theater. The dualistic conception of social structure and social life advanced by Auguste Comte has resulted necessarily in a per- sistent antagonism between two principal schools, one of which accords more importance to environment, the other to man, especially to intellectual man. It is thus that the distinction between body and soul as a continuation of the distinction between nature and man tends to the consideration of man as the king of creation and the soul as the sovereign of the body. Our sociology is different in this respect from that of Comte; it is essentially monistic.

Societies are, then, the product of a higher combination of these two elements: land and population. This combination,




this intimate blending of inorganic and organic factors into structures which are necessarily larger and more complex than organisms properly speaking, permits us to confer upon even the smallest and simplest societies the name superorganisms. Yet this appellation need not imply, a priori, any absolute iden- tity, either quantitative or qualitative, with organisms. The question of resemblances and differences is answered by direct observation of social facts, and by their comparison with organisms. It would be a capital error to proceed by simple assimilation and to seek thereby to deduce the laws of sociology from those of biology and psychology; sociology has its own characteristics and its own laws. It is only by making an abstraction of these special characteristics that sociology can perhaps be correlated gradually with the simpler and more general laws of the antecedent sciences. This operation is not within the proper domain of sociology, but belongs to that of the general philosophy of the sciences; the single philosophic ambition of sociology should be to reduce its own laws to a single sociological law, if it is possible to do so. Nevertheless, this most general sociological law, by its very nature, will be in direct contact with those of the antecedent sciences, and therefore with the most general law of philosophy as a whole.

We have recognized that the combination of the two elementary factors constitutive of every society (land and population) reveals itself, upon analysis, in pkenomena, or, if one prefers, in properties or in forces, suigeneris. We have classified these phenomena on the basis of their common and distinctive characteristics, and we have drawn up this classification in a serial and hierarchic order, according to the increasing complexity and speciality of the phenomena, just as Comte classified the phenomena relative to the antecedent sciences.

In conformity with this methodical classification of social phenomena, which is at once logical and dogmatic, natural and historical, we have constructed a hierarchic series of the special social sciences, concrete as well as abstract, of which sociology represents the general philosophy:




I. Economics. 2. Genetics. 3. AFsthetics. 4. Collective psychology. w Sociology. 5. Ethics. 6. Law. 7. Politics. J The natural character of this classification appears especially

in social embryology and in organography, in which we treated of the formation of societies and of their organs or institutions by means of differentiations. All the phenomena relating to the social sciences enter into this classification. Not only are they superior in mass, complexity, and plasticity to the analogous phenomena which we may encounter even in the most advanced antecedent sciences, such as biology and psychology, but they manifest a superiority which we may call qualitative, in contrast with the differences enumerated by Herbert Spencer, which are mainly quantitative. This characteristic peculiar to sociological phenomena, especially in its clearly conscious and well-developed forms, is encountered nowhere excepting in social bodies, although it appears in germ in certain animal societies. It is this quality which enables societies to organize collectively and to function according to contractual modes, with the result that contractualism becomes a special and superior form of social adaptation, a true method of common structure and common life. Although these forms and modes of social activity are met with in all societies, even in the simplest and most primitive, they are naturally to be observed mainly in the higher social types of humanity. They are transformed continually into an unconscious organization and activity, which in turn become the point of departure of new contractual relations. Neither in general psychology nor in biology do we find contractual phenomena, but only spontaneous cellular associations and combinations. Nowhere except in societies are aggregates, organs, groups of organs, systems of groups, associations or colonies made, unmade, dissolved, and transformed according to contractual modes, until it seems, when the more and more




regular relations which are established between the divers particular societies tend to the establishment of a vast, world-wide internationality, that contractualism becomes at a certain point the principal connective bond between the divers members of the humanitarian superorganism. Not only is contractualism the basis of the system of political federations and confederations, but it will be especially prominent in the economic federations and confederations of the future. It is the process par excellence of collective co-operation, which is the positive aspect of the division of social labor. In fact, this division of labor is applicable, not only to individuals, but also to the social forms in which they are incorporated.

Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer have observed in an imperfect manner the essential characteristic of societies. According to the former, this characteristic is that they are conscious. Herbert Spencer explained this fact by saying that they are conscious because the units composing social bodies- that is to say, men-are conscious. But these are only analogies with organisms rather than differences; at most, they are only quantitative differences. Societies are more conscious than organisms, but by what property, by what new force, does this superior degree of consciousness manifest itself ? Our response is: By the contractual force or property.

Accordingly, by virtue of the principle that the distinctive characteristics of divers orders of phenomena are clearly apparent, especially in the highest forms of the phenomena, although they appear in the lowest, we can proclaim that contractualism constitutes the distinguishing characteristic of society, both from the structural and the functional point of view; it is their superior and special mode of adaptation and life. In brief, it is the original characteristic which alone justifies the formation of the social sciences into distinct sciences and the organization of sociology into a general philosophy of these sciences.

This contractualism appears in all the stages of social history; it first manifested itself in the phenomena relating to rep- resentation, deliberation, and the execution of the collective will in political affairs; today it tends to predominate even in




economics. Moreover, this organic contractualism has abso- lutely nothing in common with Jean Jacques Rousseau's theory of the social contract; it is also the antipode of the contractualism of Yves Guiot and of radical liberalism in general; in implies the constant intervention of the collective body in its own organization and reorganization; it is a social, and not an individualistic, contractualism.

Societies in general are distinguished from individual organisms by their greater mass and their superior complexity; every society, even the simplest, is larger and more complicated than a zoological organism.

This double difference in the quantity of the social mass and in the variety of its combinations corresponds to this general phenomena of nature, that the more a substance is extended the more it is subject to variations; it being impossible for the environment to act in the same manner upon each of the parts of the mass because of their different situations.

We may say also that the quantitative differences are the profound source of the distinctive qualitative characteristics of social bodies and of their successive differentiations, as will become more apparent in the chapter devoted to social aggregates.

The variations of the social body are also favored by the fact that it is more discrete or diffuse than individual organisms; its constituent units are less intimately bound together. Its structure is less symmetrical than zoological structure, and inorganic or intermediary structures, and than organisms such as crystals. These characteristics imply the greater plasticity of society, and this plasticity has in turn the corollary of modi- fiability.

From the point of view of the interpretation of the natural structure and functioning of societies, a capital phenomenon here appears. Social bodies are not merely the result of the combination of inorganic bodies and of inferior organisms; another factor enters into their organization: the human species, population. This second factor, by virtue of its own constitution and its action and reaction upon the first, consists of sensible




units. All societies are superorganisms, endowed not only with a general sensibility, as are all other organisms, or a special sensibility, as are some other organisms, but they advance from the simplest forms of the latter to the highest, to a reasonable and even methodical collective life. Therefore, as societies are plastic and modifiable par excellence, they are able to interfere methodically in their own constitution, in their own government. On the one hand, the social organs become so much the more sensible, so much the more reasonable in each category of organs, as they assume superior forms. Thus in the economic system, the boards of conciliation, the councils of labor, of industry, and of agriculture are superior forms of sensibility and adaptation; on the other hand, the highest social functions are also the most sensible; they are so much more intelligent than the primary functions that the sociologists have wrongly divided social facts into two classes, material and ideological. Thus, the juridic sensibility, especially the political, is more intense than the economic sensibility. The superior social forms are the most conscious, the most rational. This superior sensibility is especially the accompaniment of new forms. More- over, it is a relative superiority, for the earlier forms have lost, in part, their conscious characteristic only because of their ancientness itself; they also were superior and conscious at the time of their.development. The service of posts and railways has lost its conscious contractual characteristic and has become automatic.

Social contractualism is, then, the distinctive and most important sociological phenomenon, from the qualitative point of view. It is anterior to the division of labor and appears as soon as there is homogeneous co-operation. It is the conscious method par excellence of the collective life, although it may manifest itself unconsciously, and although it may be transformed into unconscious and automatic modes of activity; that is to say, the organization and activity of societies are not merely the spontaneous products of their constitutive elements, but they may be likewise the results of their conscious action upon themselves. It is precisely by their methodical activity




and by their methodical self-direction that societies manifest their organizing power in its highest degree. And, what is remarkable, this contractualism appears more or less perfectly in every stage of all civilizations, as we shall have occasion to show in our exposition of the great law of homogeneity of social phenomena. Hence, it results that the property of organizing and functioning according to contractual modes is the essence of social aggregates.

We find contractual forms nowhere excepting in social bodies. Contracts may be made in regard to inorganic or organic bodies, but these bodies cannot themselves combine contractually. Thus, aside from the purely quantitative differences observed by Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, societies possess a special property, a characteristic mode of activity, which gives rise to equally characteristic forms: a contractual activity and contractual forms.

Therefore, sociology is not only quantitatively, but also qualitatively, distinct from the antecedent sciences; it has its own domain composed of the co-ordinated ensemble of the special social sciences, an ensemble characterized by particular phenomena. As it also has its own method, the historical method in the broadest sense, including statistics, it can and should be organized into a distinct but not independent science.

In the first volume of the Introduction, we proceeded to the analysis of the social phenomena resulting from the combination of their two constituent elements, land and population. After this analysis, we proceeded to the hierarchical classification. As it stands, this classification is in reality a co-ordination, a first sociological synthesis, at the same time subjective and objective, if we view it from the point of view of knowledge of phenomena and their order, not merely their logical and dogmatic order, but also their natural order. This classification corresponds, not only to the movement of human thought, which always proceeds from the simplest and most general facts to the most complex and most special, but it is also in harmony with the natural relationship of social phenomena, which become differentiated in proportion as they become organized.




Yet this first synthesis, which is based upon a hierarchic classification of the phenomena originating from the elementary social factors, is still very simple; it constitutes a co-ordinated series, which is mainly lineal. It has been criticised because of this fact, particularly by MM. Worms and Tarde, who fail to consider that this first part of our work was essentially analytic; that the great laws of continuity, universality, homogeneity, simultaneity, correlation, and interdependence of social phenomena could be set forth only at a later time, and that they would be especially considered in our announced synthetic volumes devoted to the general structure and life of societies.

M. G. Dewelshauwer, in L'id!alisme scientifique, pp. 77-83, likewise criticises our classification. He condemns it as being exclusively lineal, and consequently as not corresponding to reality. Like the other critics, he does not see that each of the superposed classes of phenomena is divided into a great number of branches, and that this elementary and analytic classification, because of the fact that it is abstract and elementary, is only provisional. In fact, it is in the general structure and the general life of societies that we are able to accord to the organic correlation and to the interdependence of societies the importance which they deserve; the hierarchy of elementary phenomena is added first to their concrete synthetic aspect, then to their general and abstract synthetic aspect.

In his turn, M. Worms, in Revue internatoinale de sociologie, No. 5, I893, criticises our classification by saying that social phenomena are in reality synchronous. This is true only in the homogeneous and confused state of primitive societies; progress consists precisely in their successive organic di;ferentiation and their successive appearance, but all the social functions take place synchronously in the amorphous and undifferentiated state. M. Worms also contends the genetic phenomena make double use of the constitutive factor, populations. This is an error; the factor of populations is exclusively biologic and psychic, in so far as it is a factor, while combined with the second factor (the land) into a society it becomes social and assumes special forms, giving rise to institutions or organs, groups of organs, systems,



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such as marriage, paternity, filiation, adoption, guardianship, and so on, which are not forms organized by the biologic factors, but are social phenomena. In brief, whatever M. Worms thinks of it, my classification of social phenomena is complete, and, further, the number of classes cannot be reduced without causing useless confusion.

Already, in the course of our work, the fact has appeared that in social morphology the logical and lineal classification is more and more subordinate to the simultaneous and correlative quality. Even in the first p'art of the Introduction, we showed that the repetition of the same social activities in directions which become more regular and constant gives rise to social functions which become integrated into social organs or social institutions. In the constitution of these organs there exists the same order of logical and natural filiation as for the phenomena, but with this difference, that the organs are already the particular syntheses of all the social phenomena; the lineal, hierarchic series is here mingled with a general combination of all the elements in the hierarchic order, and is therefore attenuated and reduced by an order of equivalence, each element concurring in the service of the whole, to which all the agents, especially the simplest and most general, are useful and indispensable.

Let us repeat here again that it is not necessary to attach to these expressions, functions, and organs any strict biological sense, or especially to deduce sociological conclusions from certain analogies. Nevertheless, these expressions facilitate our comprehension of the true nature of social institutions. Although there is no reason here for an absolute assimilation, the superorganisms are not totally distinct from ordinary organisms. Thus, as the more and more regular passage of nervous excita- tion by the same path explains the formation of nerve, so the more and more regular transportation of men and utilities serves to explain the formation of routes, from the natural foot-path to the railroad. Yet the route is not a nerve. The latter does not serve especially to transport elements of nutrition, although it transmits the offers and the orders; the post-office and the tele- graph, with their many stations, are in this relation more anala- gous to a nerve than are roads.




In the second volume of the Introduction, which is devoted especially to socialfunctions and organs, we have proceeded, therefore, to a new but incomplete synthesis. We have especially described the structure and the functioning of each of the social organs considered separately; however, we then strongly insisted that first the organs, next the groups of organs, and finally the systems of groups, always and necessarily present a correlative and simultaneous organization and functioning, and that all of these, including the systems of groups, which are the most extensive and the most complex forms of special social organography, are always agencies with a view to the service of the ensemble, which regulates their particular activity and acts upon their individual structure.

In our study, which has been at once both static and dynamic, of the organs, of the groups of organs, and of the systems of groups relating to the different classes of social phenomena, we have also recognized a certain order, which is both logical and natural. We have based this classification upon the degree of complexity and of specialty of the organization and functioning of the phenomena, and not, as in former classifications, upon the complexity and specialty of the phenomena themselves.

Accordingly, the economic system in its entirety is divided into three distinct but connected branches. The simplest and most general of these is that of circulation; next in order is that of consumption; last, most complex and special of all, that of production. This is an important fact; for if, as we believe, the economic life is the foundation of the entire social life, it is the circulatory system that constitutes the lower story, the foundation, the basis of the entire structure-and not production, nor the technique of production, as the school of Karl Marx maintains.

The circulatory branch of the system, likewise, according to a natural and logical order, includes: (i) the transportation of men and of utilities-(a) land, (b) maritime; (2) the transmission of offers and orders; (3) the circulation of signs representative of values; (4) the circulation of public and private instruments of credit.




It follows that, in last analysis, all social life can be reduced to a movement, to a change of place of the human units and of utilities, that is to say, of the more or less numerous parts of the two factors combined by land and sociology.

This observation, supposing it to be as exact as I think, should be of the highest importance for the general philosophy of the sciences, because it should permit us to perceive more or less clearly that sociology itself will some time be related to a universal mechanical law well understood from the purely philosophical point of view. This philosophical monism will not be able to treat social phenomena simply by themselves, according to their distinctive character and their particular laws.

The fact that in last analysis all social life can be reduced to movement, to a change of place of human units and of utilities, corresponds to the fact that every social structure can be reduced to a displacement, a movement, a new combination of land and population. It is this that we actually observe in the economic activity of the most rudimentary populations, which live by hunting, fishing, and gathering fruits, nuts, etc. All their economic activity consists in a movement, in approaching natural utilities, in bringing these utilities together. Here circulation, consumption, production are only one; they are blended in a single movement, in a circulatory movement which involves at the same time the two other phenomena, consumption and production, which are not differentiated until later. However, consumption and production in their distinct forms, in the highest distinct forms they are subsequently able to attain, nevertheless always remain as the two poles of the same sphere. At the same time, this statement explains a fact which I think no one disputes, namely, that the circulatory phenomena always tend to become organized, that is to say, socialized, before the phenomena relating to consumption, and especially before the phenomena of production, which are the most complex and the most special of all economic phenomena. Among productive phenomena those activities relating to industry, properly so called, become organized before agricultural industry.

The objection has been made that hunting, fishing, and




gathering are likewise forms of production. This is true- and they are also forms of consumption. It has also been said that all production is only a combination, that is to say, a displacement of elements. This is likewise true, but in gathering, hunting, and fishing consumption and production are still involved in the pre-eminently simple form of a displacement, of a transportation, while in production, properly speaking, there is a new combination of the raw materials which serve to form a new product.

While our logical and dogmatic classification is impregnable when we consider economic phenomena in the abstract, it seems even more valid from the historical and natural point of view, when we consider them in their social forms, in their organization. Thus all the sociologists, including the socialists, point out that the circulatory phenomena of societies, represented by roads, canals, railways, postal systems, telegraphs, telephones, money, credit, banks, are much more advanced in organization and in socialization than the phenomena of production or even of consumption. There is even one universal organ-the international Postal Union. There are commercial museums. There is a universal code of marine signals, and the same thing is true of music and science. The unity existing in the majority of the treaties of commerce, in the most-favored-nation clause, has the same meaning as international expositions. There is a bibliography planned according to a common method, and even universities with international scope. In addition to all the concordant observations which I have presented elsewhere upon the relative advancement of the circulatory forms, as compared with those of consumption, and especially of production, particularly in my Essais sur la monnaie, la cridif, et les banques, I have found confirmation in this not less interesting fact emphasized by M. Polleans in his creditable book on L'accaparement, viz., that

not only economic facts, but the words for them, have had their evolution. One could not speak of monopoly of production so long as concentration of the means of production did not exist. Speculative or commercial monopoly, which for a long time was the only kind in sight, is entirely eclipsed at



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present by the power of productive monopoly (P. 7). The legal notion of monopoly [accaziaremen/] is strictly determined by the monopoly of specula- tion. This is to be explained by the legal code, and by the object which Art. 419 had in view ... . That article was promulgated at a time when understandings between producers were not yet born. Its intention was to protect freedom of trade and to secure respect for an individualistic conception of the relations of exchange. At that time isolated production on a small scale, divided by competition, was essentially individualistic, and there was nothing to fear except speculative commercial manceuvres (P. io).

Thus, up to the most recent economic phenomena, the order of formation and of constitution, proceeding from circulation over to production, is confirmed in a constant manner.

We have likewise shown that there is a natural order in production itself; thus industrial production, properly speaking, is much more perfect and in reality more ancient in its social forms than agricultural production. Progress of the first has always preceded that of the second, not merely from the technical point of view, but also from the point of view of socialization. In spite of belief and even appearances to the contrary, industrial production, like agriculture, not merely requires a sufficient development of the mechanical, physical, and chemical sciences, but it also requires a development of biology. So in the coun- tries most advanced in civilization, agriculture, in contrast with manufacture, is still essentially empirical; it has been of this character to such an extent that its tools, with few exceptions, have been but little modified for centuries. Further, the industrial organization has already assumed much higher social forms; industry has been freed from the feudal regime and from paternal sbsolutism to a much greater extent than agriculture. Yet it may be objected that just as in industry the manufacture of cotton was emancipated before the manufacture of wool, precisely because the former is the more recent, and was therefore established with fewer restrictions, so likewise industry as a whole is more advanced than agriculture, because it is more recent. However, in fact, we encounter a certain development of industry among all peoples, even in cases where there is no agriculture; agriculture is a special differentiation of general industry.



INTRODUCTION 70 SOCIOLOGY 507

In Part II, we have proceded to a similar classification of the organs and groups of organs: genetic, artistic, scientific, moral, juridic, and political. This classification is a second synthesis, at once subjective and objective, for it organizes our knowledge, and at the same time it rests upon observations conforming to concrete reality. One of the most constant laws which we have recognized at this point of our studies is that the social functions and organs thus considered by themselves assume a structure which is less rigid and despotic as their organization becomes more developed and perfect. With evolutionary progress, in the place of order resulting from commandment there is substi- tuted order resulting from the perfecting of the organization itself.

A third positive synthesis, which is still special, shows that the numerous social functions and organs are only the result of sociological differentiation from a primitive homogeneous state, out of which they emerge by way of natural filiation. We have shown that, by the very fact of this filiation, the functions and the organs are related to each other in such a way that the highest forms in each class, and the highest forms of the ensemble -of the classes of functions and organs, are interrelated as the divers branches of an immense genealogical tree. Thus the circulatory function, which is the simplest and most general economic function, not only gives rise to a whole series of organs which jointly perform the work of circulation, but it also gives rise to an uninterrupted line of functions and organs relating to consumption, such as private and public markets, wholesale and retail commercial houses, etc., and to an analogous line of functions and organs which participate in the work of production. Further, the economic functions and organs give rise to domestic, artistic, scientific, moral, juridic, and political institutions, all of which are related to the economic functions and organs, and to each other as direct and collateral descendants of common ancestors.

Let us recall, for example, that from the esthetic point of view a natural classification arises, which is based at the same time upon the relations of the arts to our senses, to the exterior




world, to logic (to which it is related because of their greater or less degree of complexity and speciality), and also to their historical order parallel to their logical order.

The arts concerned with our most general relations with the exterior world, clothing and ornament, the dwelling and architecture, are the simplest. Next come those relating to our senses, beginning with the most general senses, the muscular-the sense of movement and the tactile -from which all the special senses are derived. Harmony of movement was first represented by dances, whose most ordinary manifestations are war dances, pastoral dances, imitations of the hunting of man and of animals, imitations of peaceful occupations and of love. The arts relating to our general sensibility, which is mainly tactile, especially represent the pleasure arising from contact with smooth, soft, and pleasing forms. Then come the arts which are related to our lowest special senses, and which aid in the formation and development of the same-the culinary art, perfumery, etc., which correspond to taste and smell. Moreover, all the special senses are a progressive differentiation of the most general and elementary senses, the muscular and the tactile; they combine the sensation of movement with that of static simultaneity resulting from contact. Hearing and sight are the highest of the senses. They imply movement and touch, which, however, do not necessarily imply sight and hearing. Architecture, sculpture, painting, are the successive forms of art in relation to life. As for music, it is the emotional art par excellence, the highest and the most complex emotional art, in spite of its sentimental diffusion in the nervous system. Literature is the most complex and the most special art, the most precise of the fine arts. Like architecture, it erects the noblest edifices; like sculpture, it creates the most beautiful forms-inorganic, organic, and, above all, human and gives to each a color living and brilliant or somber or gray as the reality; its language is musical. At the same time, literature serves as a medium and opens to us the highest in ideation and in scientific knowledge, first concrete knowledge, and finally abstract. It embraces in its descriptions all the sensations furnished by the inferior arts, subordinating them in part to the




ideal, just as music does. Music, in spite of its vaguer character, nevertheless also succeeds in represening our most complex sentiments, and in expressing the emotional tonality always inherent even in our most abstract ideas. Literature, with its double instrument, speech and writing, in a word, by means of language, places art in direct relationship with the intellectual aspect of the collective psychology. By means of literature, oral and written language, whose point of departure is gesture and mimicry, and mimetic or picture-writing, whose point of arrival is the apparently purely conventional signs derived from the same, language joins art to science and to the collective intellectual psychology. Language is, then, an eminently social organ. Auguste Comte, in his Static Sociology, has accorded to it an important place, and if, as represented by adverse criticism, I have spoken of it only incidentally in my first two volumes of the Introduction, this was because, in the first place, it seemed to me to be included as a constitutive element in the description, like that above, which I there made of literature; and because, in the second place, to tell the truth, the philosophy of language does not appear to me to be as yet sufficiently elucidated. This second reason is partly, and perhaps wholly, due to the imperfection of my own linguistic attainments, which do not permit me to treat specially this important problem, Besides, from the point of view of the general structure of societies, it is sufficient for me to point out, as I have just done, that literature, both oral and written, is a connective organ join- ing art to scientific knowledge, which is the essential subject of collective psychology, properly speaking.

So far as collective psychology is concerned (aside from the consideration, too often overlooked, that no social phenomenon, not even an economic phenomenon, is exclusively either material or idealogical, and that, consequently, everything related to sociology, by the very reason of its constitutive factors, is inorganic, organic, and physic), we may accept the grand divisions adopted by Auguste Comte (religion, metaphysics, and positive philosophy) as representing the successive and progressive stages of the co-ordination and the evolution of social psychism.




In the social psychism I include oral and written language, which, as I have shown, serves as a means of transition between art and science. But, as we shall see later in the general structure of societies, every phenomenon implies all the others; thus an economic phenomenon always has a genetic, -esthetic, scientific, moral, juridic, or political character. Now, although Comte's law of the three stages may be applicable to the last four classes or phenomena, it is particularly necessary to recognize that it cannot be applied either to economics or genetics or art, which are of a superior generality. We are obliged, then, to reject at once not only what is called historic material- ism, but also all biologic sociology; and in particular psychic sociology. Beliefs, morals, law, and politics are material, as are all other social phenomena; the contrary is conceivable only in the abstract, analytical part of sociology; but in the real social structures, that is to say, in so far as the phenomena are incorporated in organized aggregates, each social fact is at the same time economic, genetic, asthetic, moral, juridic, and political. This comnposite character, already apparent in special social organography, will appear to us as a fundamental law, especially in the study of the structure of societies as a whole.

The recognition that social organs are co-ordinated into groups of organs having a common function is, then, a further step in synthesis. Thus, the means of transportation, the banks of deposit, of issue, of credit, and of payment, money, etc., form the circulatory apparatus; the latter combines with the organs of the apparatus of consumption and those of production to constitute the economic system. The last, in its turn, will appear to us in the general synthesis as one of the grand subdivisions of the social structure as a whole.

Thus, in proportion as we advance from the elementary study of social phenomena to their organic co-ordination, which increases in extent and complexity, the hierarchic character of the primary analytical classification gives place to a correlation, and therefore to an equivalence, so that all idea of superiority, and even of anteriority, becomes very attenuated. This is true in the sense that in reality the highest forms may claim a certain



INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 5II

pre-eminence because of their special functions, while the forms called inferior may boast, not only of their utility, but of their fundamental necessity.

The organs, groups, and systems relating to the seven distinct classes of social phenomena represent what are commonly called the social institutions. In the special work which we intend soon to devote to the static theories of the three principal representatives of sociology in the nineteenth century, Quetelet, Comte, and Spencer, we shall have occasion, even while pointing out the immense value of their works, to observe the faults of method which have too often vitiated their conclusions. The organs or institutions of societies are indeed syntheses, but they are also particular syntheses. At present, let us merely point out that Quetelet confines himself too much to the observation of elementary social facts, that is to say, to statistics. Yet, his point of departure is better and his method more exact and more certain than that of Comte and Spencer, although in sociology his theory of probability and of averages is comparatively erroneous. His profound statistical studies have saved him from error in synthetic principles, which are insufficiently verified and proved by the two masters of the French and English schools of positive sociology. Although the foundations of his structure are more solid, on the other hand Quetelet almost entirely neglects the study of social institutions-of which the statistical phenomena are only the materials. On the contrary, Comte and Spencer take no account of statistics, of elementary facts, especially economic facts, which are the most important of all. They begin at once with the consideration of social forms or institutions; in the case of Comte, even the latter are sacrificed to the consideration of the ensemble of humanity and are deduced from the same. Between the method of Quetelet, who represents, so to speak, molecular sociology, and that of Comte, who especially represents synthetic sociology, Spencer takes the mean, which, although it is without the qualities of the first, is also without the dangers of the second. It is only by combin- ing, according to a methodical order, their three distinct points of view that we can hope to trace the outline of concrete sociology, then that of the abstract.



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The sociology of Quetelet is mathematical, mechanical, and physical; his theory of averages is mainly static; with him, evolution is accessory; with Comte and Spencer, dynamics pre- dominates; in the work of the latter it almost entirely absorbs statics. The sociology of Spencer, in spite of the fact that it may be reduced to the most general laws of energy, is mainly descriptive; that of Comte is mainly abstract, and is wanting in statics or descriptions; thus Spencer is the mean between Comte and Quetelet; they complement each other; however, united they still remain incomplete.

In short, it is necessary henceforth to subject ourselves to the rigor of slow but sure scientific methods. The general statics and dynamics of societies and of humanity should have for their bases correct statistics of all the facts relating to the seven classes of social phenomena. Statistics, whether represented by diagrams or not, show quantitatively the condition and the movement of societies. It is true that, by themselves, they do not permit a perception of qualitative value, except for determined periods and civilizations. Statistics, by itself, is not able to construct an abstract sociology, nor is it able to construct any of the particular abstract social sciences which are the foundation of abstract sociology. Nevertheless, the quantitative factor is not a negligible element of the qualitative factor; it is even a first and fundamental condition of all qualitative differentiation. There is no discontinuity between the quantitative and the qualitative aspects; but the first is mainly historical, the second, abstract and universal. The one implies the other; they are not contradictory. From the error of believing the contrary springs without doubt the fact that many of the most eminent economists, demographers, aestheticians, moralists, jurists, and political scientists acknowledge only historical laws. However, this error is less fatal than that of the metaphysicians who venture to conceive of natural laws not founded upon gen- eralization from particular historical laws, and from the elementary social facts which constitute the basis of the latter.

To sum up: In the first place, statistics are necessary for enumeration and quantitative knowledge of all the elements of



INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 5I3

the special social sciences-the more general institutions and structures in whose composition these elements are combined being disregarded; next, there is necessity for a knowledge of all the special social institutions; then there will exist the possibility of a general sociology, first concrete, then abstract. This is the methodical order, which is at once logical, dogmatic, and historical or natural.

Such are the successive steps in the study of social science. However, as in all the other natural sciences, the human mind successively learns to descend from superficial consideration of the whole to deeper and deeper consideration of its parts. After the preliminary and the indispensable study of the two great social factors constitutive of every society, land and population, which are the subjects of the antecedent sciences, the first step in social science is, then, the statistical or quantitative evaluation of elementary social phenomena. These phenomena may be studied either apart from the organs, groups of organs, systems, and societies in which they appear, or in connection with the structures in which they are incorporated. Even in their abstract study, certain relationships appear among the phenomena. However, abstract statistics is not an adequate method, since the statistical elements are comparable only under similar circumstances. In proof of this, the theory of averages, for example, has value from the point of view of population only for members of the same variety of the human species. The arithmetical mean of the height of Laplanders and Patagonians considered together would not correspond to the average height of either race considered separately, nor would it correspond to the real general mean of both races. However, when we proceed from the midst of elementary statistical facts to the study of the social institutions in which these facts are combined, we then succeed in distinguishing in the arrangement and in the development of these institutions certain constant and necessary relations, which are independent of all transitory historical forms. Statistics alone cannot furnish us with a general conception of the organization and evolution of all human societies and of humanity. To enable us to approach and understand this




organization and evolution is the function of history-the history of particular social organizations, and, finally, the history of societies themselves in their ensemble as true institutions in the service of the great universal society. Thus in genetics the statistics of marriages and those of legitimate and illegitimate births initiate us perfectly into knowledge of the genetic elements of a given society in a given historical period; but the laws which we are able to derive by these observations are never applicable except to societies having the same institutions as those in connection with which the tabulated unions and births (some legitimate, others illegitimate) take place. Even the most general statistical facts, those relating to births and deaths, are comparable only in connection with institutions. In fact, what is the use of announcing pretended general and abstract laws if it is necessary to add all conditions being equal, and if these equal conditions do not exist? It is only by demonstrating the existence of a constant order of structure and evolution in the particular organs of the societies, and in the societies themselves, that it can be completely shown that there are laws of natality and mortality. It is, then, by studying genetics, not only in its elements, but also in its institutions, and as an integrating factor of societies, that we shall succeed in discovering constant and necessary relations, static and dynamic laws, common to all societies. Although sociology is given a first form by elementary statistics, it is, so to speak, the particular institutions and societies themselves that become the direct materials of sociology. For example, we shall show that a regular order of evolution exists among primitive promiscuity, polyandry, polygamy, the matriarchate, the patriarchate, and the androgynous couple who are politically equal, or rather equivalent, and who are recognized as such in the institutions. From these different special historical forms we shall be able, therefore, to deduce special laws, at first concrete, then abstract. Likewise, taking a further step, we shall advance to the consideration of the static and dynamic conditions of various co-ordinated institutions, at first in particular societies, and finally in societies considered as a whole. Thus we shall also succeed in discovering the general




laws, at first concrete, then abstract, which are applicable to all social types, past, present, and even future, including that grand social type which is in course of formation, the cosmopolitan type. Thus, disregarding successively the accessory variations in order that we may better consider only the constant aspect of societies, including even the constant aspect of the variations themselves, we shall be able to conclude, for example, that the constant genetic function is the preservation and development of the individual by the species and of the species by the individual, with the least possible waste of energy. Moreover, so far as concerns the distribution of wealth, and its special organ, commerce, we shall show that, in spite of all historical variations, its constant function is and will be to lead utilities to the point where they are necessary, with the greatest economy. Contrary to an imperfect view of the case, the commercial function appears accordingly to be as eternal as that of the entire social life of which it is a particular agent.

An attempt like that of Herbert Spencer or that of Auguste Comte to found a social philosophy or sociology without preliminary preparation in statistics, that is to say, in what may he called molecular sociology, or an attempt like that of Ad. Quetelet, with statistics alone, is an undertaking which has been upheld only because sociology is the last-born of the abstract sciences. Unless we deny the unity of scientific method and the existence of social science itself, it is necessary that sociology be brought under this inflexible and necessary discipline.

Does this mean that those who wish to treat of general and abstract sociology must necessarily devote themselves to all the preparatory statistical and historical studies? No; the lives of many generations, much less the life of an individual, would not be sufficient for this. But general abstract sociology can and must constitute itself a scientific specialty, the specialty of abstract generalizations, but on the express condition, as in the case of all the other scientific specialties, that the specialty in general sociology utilize in the most conscientious and methodical manner the reports and materials roughhewn by statistics and fashioned by the historians of the divers social institutions




and of the particular societies. The division of scientific labor forces itself on each generation, and even among the successive generations; in reality, this division of labor, whose negative aspect is mostapparent, represents a continued, affective co-operation and collaboration, a single collective work, from the social point of view; it has always existed; the problem is merely to render the work more methodical and coherent by an appropriate organization.

Such is the course that we have followed up to the present time, and that we expect to pursue -considering, however, our individual effort, which has been especially facilitated by the whole of the anterior work, as only a very small contribution to the general contribution. After having studied in the second part of the Introduction to Sociology the social functions and organs by themselves, from the point of view of their structure and functioning, we now have to advance to new syntheses, those of the structure and the life of the ensemble of societies, considering first their structure. We have to investigate the general abstract laws of this structure, that is to say, the laws common to all civilizations at all times and in all places.

Let us recall, then, that this general, abstract structure is based upon knowledge of concrete social structures, including knowledge of their institutions or special organs, and that in both cases the materials are furnished by elementary statistics.

This is why, in conformity to this method, I have for a long time carried on numerous statistical studies, and have given many lectures (some of which have been published) upon certain great civilizations, particularly ancient Peru and Mexico, Egypt, India, China, Iran, Persia, and ancient Greece; this is why I have delivered and published many lectures upon advanced political economy and upon the detailed history of social economy. In short, my readers, and especially my pupils, have been the spectators, and at times the collaborators, of my preparatory studies and the critics of my method. This method advances continually from the simple to the complex, from the general to the special, from the concrete to the abstract; thus




abstract sociology appears to us as the positive philosophy of the inductions of all the social sciences.

It is these inductions, for example, and not simple biological analogies, which will lead us to recognize and to point out that the structure of all society is primarily determined by its economic organization; but in the concrete sociological synthesis this law will lose its absolute character by the very fact that every economic phenomenon is inseparable from the genetic, asthetic, scientific, ethical, juridic, and political elements; the separation does not exist in abstract analysis. It is thus only that the fundamental character of the economic branch of the social structure is common to all civilizations; we can generalize and make an abstraction of all the local and temporary variations. In concrete reality no social phenomenon is free from mixture; the general abstract laws rise above this concrete character, but without losing sight of it. Let us here recall our definition of a law: A law is a constant and necessary relation between any phenomenon and the conditions under which this phenomenon appears. When the conditions remain the same, the phenomenon remains constant; this is the static aspect of law. When the conditions vary, the phenomenon varies; this is the dynamic aspect of law.

In last analysis, all relations can be reduced to relations of similarity or of difference, either in time or space, or else in time and space together. Laws must not be confused with causes; thus weight and gravitation are not causes. In the scientific sense, causes are the conditions which regularly accompany or precede the appearance of a phenomenon. We especially call the conditions which precede a phenomenon the causes of the same; for example, the ensemble of the conditions constituting springtime is called by us the cause of the blooming of the lilacs, Likewise, we consider low wages as a partial cause of illegitimate births; they regularly precede and accompany the latter. There- fore, the knowledge of causes-that is to say, knowledge of the conditions which precede, pave the way for, and favor the appearance of social phenomena-permits us to foresee the return of these phenomena. Hence, by modifying or suppress-




ing these conditions we may modify a phenomenon or even eliminate it.

These previsions have a character which is clearly scientific. Examples appear in my Lois sociologiques, pp. 46-52, I I2.

The previsions which we have expressed in each of the successive editions of this work have in each case been verified. Yet they might not have been verified. Then it would have been necessary to investigate the new conditions which may have modified the phenomenon. However, the modifications can be only variations of intensity, that is to say, quantitative variations, so long as the conditions, although variable, are the same. This point of view, which is mainly qualitative, becomes predominant in the study of the synthesis of the functions of the social organs, groups of organs, and systems of particular societies, and in the study of civilization considered as a whole, independently of time and space. Thus, although in the examples cited in my Lois sociologigues the apparent advance of nominal wages might easily have corresponded to stationary wages, or even to a real fall of wages resulting from an increase of the price of commodities necessary for the subsistence of the coal- miners, in abstract sociology the question of illegitimate births or of wages can no longer arise, since these phenomena are purely historical forms of natality and of reward for labor; but there will always remain the corresponding abstract law that the relations of parents and children are closer as the standard of life of the former is elevated.

Knowledge of the causes or conditions favorable to the appearance or disappearance of certain social phenomena is the basis of the experimental method in sociology and in political science. The individual savant can in general only point out, observe, and describe the experiments, and show how certain phenomena may be modified; but the real modifications in the social world must, in the main, be accomplished by collective forces.

Social variations and accidents are always confined to limits which become narrow in proportion as our observation extends over a long period of time, over a great extent of space, and to a great number of cases. In this connection, the theory of proba-




bility and the theory of averages, so well set forth by Laplace, J. Fourier, Ad. Quetelet, Cournot, and others, will always be the best preparation for the positive conception of the social order. While the variable accidental causes or conditions neutralize each other by repetition, the constant conditions (also variable) act with an intensity more and more pronounced. Besides, constancy and necessity are relative rather than absolute ideas, except in the abstract sciences, in which the relative aspect remains understood. From the concrete point of view, the physical environment is the most constant; the organic environment is constant to a less extent; the social environment shares the conditions of both the physical and the organic environ- ments.

I shall not essay in this part of my Introduction, any more than in the preceding parts, to set forth a complete theory, a system. It is still necessary for us to limit ourselves for a long time to perfecting methods, tracing outlines, and indicating directions. My entire sociology is derived from observation of the facts and from the social experiences of history; it is therefore subject to constant criticism and revision.

The true scientific unity, the unity that is sufficient even in theory, is the unity of the positive method; it is with the help of this method alone that I attempt to trace some of the principal outlines of a general, abstract theology. Therefore, the present problem is not that of imagining and sketching a plan for the best of republics, or even that of indicating practical reforms to be realized in modern societies. The Republic and the Laws of Plato cannot serve as models for us. I propose simply to investigate how every society is made, constructed, or rather organized, and what are the constant conditions of its equilibrium and structure. Science and art are distinct; biology and anatomy are not medicine and surgery, that is to say, thera- peutics; nevertheless, social science, like all the other sciences, seeks even among the extreme collective perturbations for the confirmation of the necessary and constant order of human aggregates.

Nevertheless, the first result of an exact conception of the




constant structure of societies is to destroy other conceptions which are less exact and even false, and which are in themselves, by their obstructive force, an obstacle to reforms; such, for example, is the conception that the social order is immutable and that human intervention is impotent to modify the same, or else the inverse conception, that there are no other social laws, no other social order, than those imposed by the legislator.

G. DE GREEF. BRUSSELS.

[To be contznued.]



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